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Obama, NATO, Bin Laden, Gaddafi: they are all our enemies

After NATO bombings on a building in Tripoli killed a son and three grandchildren of Muammar Gaddafi, there were revenge attacks on the cities of Benghazi and Misrata, and attacks on the British and Italian embassies, among other targets. The killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by American special forces was supposedly undertaken in revenge for the 3000 9/11 murders. When the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya heard of bin Laden’s death they called for Gaddafi to face the same fate.

This spiral of murder and destruction is further evidence of capitalism’s appetites in an era where every state, every capitalist faction that aspires to power, is compelled to follow the military option and the path of terror.

In this capitalist world the antagonists go under many flags, but they are all pursuing the same goals. Gaddafi is favoured by many who call themselves socialists, despite being at the heart of a regime for whom repression is second nature and vicious retaliation comes automatically. Barrack Obama is supposed to be a ‘friend of freedom’, yet his military campaigns, from the bombing of Pakistan within the first few days of taking office, just continue from where George Bush left off. Bin Laden is seen by some as an ‘anti-imperialist’ hero, but his ultimate dream of a multi-national caliphate is one of the oldest imperialist projects going. And as for the Libyan ‘rebels’ of the National Transitional Council, they can be marked down as enemies of the exploited and oppressed on a number of counts, from the backing of the US, the calls for the return to a monarchy, and the basic fact that so many of them were not so long ago integral to Gaddafi’s state apparatus.

Following the killing of bin Laden there were commentators in the US who spoke about the possibility of ‘closure’ for the victims of 9/11. With the continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iran and Libya there is clearly no closure for those who have been caught up in and become victims of the American ‘war on terror.’

As Obama said in his first speech celebrating the killing of bin Laden “his death does not mark the end of our effort. There's no doubt that al-Qaida will continue to pursue attacks against us.” Indeed it will, and if one terrorist force is diminished then others can easily take its place. Obama asserted that “we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to”. American imperialism, however it is minded, cannot impose its will in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, despite being the world’s biggest military power. On the contrary, all its actions tend, in Obama’s words not to “make the world a safer place” but exacerbate conflicts and chaos across the face of the planet.

Some things have changed since 9/11. In the Middle East, for example, despite the fantasies of Gaddafi, al-Qaida has never really got a foothold, whatever its strengths in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the recent social movements in various Arab countries, whatever their confusions, there has been no sign that protesters have been going in the direction of al-Qaidaist ideas, adoption of sharia law or other Islamic tenets. On the contrary, many of the demonstrators have explicitly rejected the vicious sectarian and gender divisions which al-Qaida stands for. A bigger obstacle to the movements in North Africa and the Middle East has been the myth of democracy, which serves to prevent the working class from acting as an independent force in society.

All the figureheads of capitalism, whether in the White House, in a tent in the desert, in a cave in the mountains, or in the affluent suburbs, stand for a world of war and destruction and against the liberation of humanity.  

Car 2/5/11

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메이데이 당일 실천일정을 반영하여 불가피하게 토론회 일정을 오후 7시로 연기하였습니다.

시작시간 변경을 유의하여 참석 부탁드립니다. 

사회주의 혁명당에 함께 한다는 것은, 일회성 정치 캠페인에 동원되고 조직되어 박수치고 감동받는 과정이 아니라,  공산주의 혁명에 대한 확고한 전망과 실천의 지침이 되어주는 혁명강령에 대한 토론과 승인 그리고 그 과정에서 치열한 사상투쟁을 통해 낡은 이데올로기를 벗어던지고 공산주의 투사,  노동자혁명가로 다시 태어나는 역사적 행위인 것이다.

 [혁명정당 강령 정립을 위한 2차 토론회]

자본주의 쇠퇴와 사회주의 혁명

세계 자본주의에 대한 분석이 주기적 순환론에 그치는 것이 아니라

왜, 언제부터 자본주의가 진보적이기를 멈추고,

사회주의 혁명의 전야로써 쇠퇴기로 규정할 수 있는지,

더불어 자본주의 쇠퇴기의 특징은 무엇인지 살펴 본다.

자본주위 쇠퇴기에 대한 규정은

우리가 성취해야 하는 혁명이 사회주의 노동자 혁명이 아닌

어떠한 다른 혁명이 결코 될 수 없음을 말해 준다.

발제 : 오세철

사회 : 고민택

일정 : 2011년 5월 1일 (일) 오후 7시

장소 : 전국철도노동조합 서울지방본부 2층 강당

참가문의 : redplane@jinbo.net로 연락처 남겨주시기 바랍니다. 

[사노위 혁명정당 강령 정립 모임]

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히로시마에서 후쿠시마까지  -ICT

Meltdown(노심용융)

 지난 3월 11일 사상 최악인 8.9리히터 규모의 지진과 쓰나미가 일본을 강타했다. 수만 명이 죽었고, 수십만 명의 이재민은 할 말조차 잃고 말았다. 하지만 채 여진이 닥치기도 전에 다른 문제점들이 발생했다. 지진과 쓰나미는 이후에 닥쳐올 재앙에 비하면 한낱 전조에 불과했다. 지진 발생 사흘 후 후쿠시마 다이치현의 핵발전소와 또 다른 핵발전소에서 발생한 두 차례 폭발로 행융합로 노심용융까지 위협받는 상황에 이르렀고, 이에 따라 일본에서의 핵에너지 자체에 대한 의문까지 제기되는 상황에 이르렀다. 세계에서 가장 지진 위험이 높은 국가 중 하나인 일본이 도대체 어떻게 53개나 되는 핵발전소를 보유한 세계 3위의 핵에너지 대국이 되었을까?

이에 대해 3월 14일자 파이낸셜 타임즈의 데이빗 필링은 다음과 같이 밝히고 있다.

“자원 부족 국가로서 일본은 위험한 세계에서 병적으로 집착해왔다. 그리고 이것이 전혀 근거가 없는 것은 아니다.”

86년 발생한 체르노빌 사고는 단일 사고만으로도 엄청난 방사능 유출과 함께, 이후 전세계에 걸쳐 어느 정도인지 확인하기도 힘들 정도의 암발병 증가를 초래했다. 그런데 현재 후쿠시마에서는 6개나 되는 원자로 노심이 녹아내릴 위험에 처해 있으며, 다른 2개의 대형 핵발전소 역시 지진대에 위치해 있다. 그럼에도 불구하고 일본의 전력회사와 정부는 방사능 유출에 대해서 제대로 진실을 밝히지 않았다. 그리고 이런 위험은 이전에도 있었다. 필링은 다음과 같이 언급하고 있다.

일본은 이미 한 차례 예행연습도 겪은 바 있다. 2007년 7월 당시로서는 상당한 규모였던 6.8리히터 지진이 일본 북부 니이가타 근처의 초대형 핵발전소인 카시와자키-카리와 핵발전소를 강타했다. 이 지진으로 인해 세계에서 가장 큰 발전소 중 하나인 카시와자키-카리와 발전소조차 애초 설계부터 6.8리히터 가량의 지진에 견딜 없었다는 것이 밝혀졌다. 당시 반응로 중 하나에 가해진 충격은 설계 당시 내진 강도보다 2.5배나 강력한 것이었다.

하지만 필링은 일본 정부가 자국민뿐만 아니라 지구 전체를 위험에 빠트리는 것이 전혀 ‘비이성적이지는 않다’고 했다. 86년에 체르노빌에 관한 기사에 ICT가 “원자력 러시안 룰렛”이라고 제목을 붙였는데, 정말 위험한 도박이 지금 일본에서도 벌어지고 있는 것이다.

제국주의자들의 명령

일본은 최근까지 석탄에 있어서만큼은 자급자족이 가능했다. 하지만 석탄을 제외한 나머지 자연 자원 부족은 항상 일본의 걱정거리였다. 이러한 상황은 일본으로 하여금 1895년 중국과, 1905년 러시아와 전쟁을 불사하게 했고, 1911년 조선 합병과 1931년 만주 침공까지 감행하게 하였다. 그리고 물론 더욱 극적인 예로는 바로 2차 세계대전을 들 수 있다. 일본의 1937년 중국 본토를 침공에 대해, 미국은 즉각 일본으로의 석유 공급 차단으로 대응했다. 일본은 이후 4년 동안 자구책을 마련하려 애썼지만 문제를 해결하지 못했고, 결국 궁극의 도박을 감행하기로 결정했다. 일본은 미국의 태평양 함대를 한 방에 날려버리고 인도네시아와 태평양 연안 제도를 점령하고, 이를 통해 석유와 다른 원자재를 손에 넣으려는 위험한 도박을 한 것이다. 일본이 자원 확보를 위해 아시아 무대에서 영국과 독일 제국주의를 패퇴키는 것까지도 염두에 두고 있었다는 사실이 최근 공개된 문서를 통해 밝혀졌다.

이것이 1941년 12월 7일 진주만 공습의 배경이다. 하지만 일본의 도박은 공습 6달도 채 안된 1942년 6월 미드웨이 해전에서 모든 일본 항모가 침몰하면서 패배로 막을 내렸다. 그런데 미국은 일본 문제를 마무리 짓기에 앞서 유럽전선에서 사소한 문제들을 해결해야 했다. 유럽전선에서 분열이 발생한 것이다. 그것은 바로 소비에트 연방과의 전시 동맹의 균열이었다. 당시 미국은 소비에트의 적군이 유럽 전선에서 서쪽으로 진군하는 것을 우려하고 있었다. 트루먼 대통령은 동부 전선에서 대해서도 소비에트 연방이 개입하면서, 만주와 조선, 그리고 중국이 스탈린의 손에 떨어지지 않을까 걱정했다. 결국 미국인 기자 리차드 로데스가 ‘원폭 제조’에서 밝힌 바와 같이 히로시마와 나가사키에 원폭을 투하한 것은 단순히 미국을 구하기 위해서가 아니라 스탈린의 동부 전선으로의 개입을 차단하기 위해서였다. 스탈린이 45년 8월 9일로 동부전선에 개입하기로 예정되어있었고, 소비에트의 개입을 차단하기 위해 그 직전인 8월 6일 히로시마, 8월 8일 나가사키에 원폭이 투하된 것이다.

히로시마와 나가사키 피폭으로 일본인들은 더 이상 원자력을 아예 사고의 지평 저 너머로 내던져버렸을까? 전혀 그렇지 않다. 1951년 미일안전보장조약 체결로 일본은 미국의 군사적 보호 아래 핵개발 프로그램에 착수했다. 히로시마 피폭으로 인한 백혈병 희생자들이 드러나기 시작한 바로 그 순간 일본은 핵발전을 향해 나아갔던 것이다. 일본이 세계 경제에서 핵심적인 지위를 차지하면서 일본은 더 많은 에너지원을 필요로 했고, 전후 세계에서 핵심적인 에너지원은 바로 석유였다. 자본주의 경기 순환에 있어 하락국면을 맞이했던 1971년 당시 일본은 자국 에너지 수요의 85%를 수입에 의존하는 상태였다. 미국에서 경기하락은 달러화에 대한 금태환을 포기하면서 달러가치 폭락으로 드러났다. 달러가치의 하락은 산유국의 실질 수입 하락으로 이어졌고, 이에 따라 유가는 급등했다. 에너지 안보가 전세계적인 슬로건이 되었고 이 문제는 오늘날에도 에너지 수입선 다변화라는 형태로 여전히 진행중이다. 특히 국내 산업생산 증대에도 불구하고 이를 뒷받침할 자원이 부족했던 일본으로서는 에너지 문제에 있어서 가장 취약할 수밖에 없었다. 따라서 중동보다 훨씬 안정적인 남아공의 폐금광을 석유 비축 시설로 임대해서 사용하기 위해 남몰래 남아공의 인종분리 정책을 지원하는 것까지 불사했던 일본이 핵에너지를 고려한 것은 전혀 비이성적이라고 할 수 없지 않은가.

이성적인 세계?

어쨌든 자본주의 사회에서 자본주의적 표현으로서 ‘이성적’이라는 말은 우리가 생각하는 ‘이성적’이라는 말과는 관계가 없다. 우리는 국민국가로 구성된 세계에 살고 있으며, 이 세계는 앞서 파이낸설 타임즈가 ‘위험한’ 세계라고 언급한 바로 그 세계다. 세계가 위험한 이유는 오늘날 자본주의가 국민국가들 간에 자원을 위한 은폐된 경쟁 혹은 공공연한 전쟁 형태로 대결하는 제국주의 단계에 이르렀기 때문이다. 따라서 세계에서 가장 지진 위험이 높은 나라에 핵발전소를 세우는 것이 ‘위험한’ 세계에서는 이성적일 수도 있다.

이 글에서는 의도적으로 핵에너지 자체에 대한 논란은 다루지 않았다. 왜냐하면 자본주의 하에서는 어떠한 이성적인 토론도 불가능하며, 이윤 동기나 일국적 관점 하에서는 논점이 항상 왜곡될 수밖에 없기 때문이다. 일본의 핵에 대한 광기가 바로 그 증거다. 제국주의자들은 이번 사고를 통해 인간의 미래의 필요와 양립할 수 없는 전쟁과 비이성적인 정책들로 가득찬 제죽주의의 면모를 그대로 드러낸 것이다. 정말 “이성적인 세계”에서는 국민국가라고 하는 것도 존재하지 않을 것이며, 제국주의적 경쟁, 사람보다 이윤을 우선시하는 태도도 존재하지 않는다. 물론 파괴적인 전쟁도 없다. 하지만 이러한 이성적인 세계는 오직 전세계 노동자계급의 힘으로 모든 비이성적인 요소를 만들어낸 자본주의적 생산 자체를 철폐함으로써만 가능하다.

원문 :  ICT   (http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-03-17/from-hiroshima-to-fukushima)

번역 :  사노위  kim

From Hiroshima to Fukushima

Meltdown

The earthquake and tsunami which struck Japan on 11 March at 8.9 on the Richter scale was one of the worst ever recorded. The tragedy of the tens of thousands of dead and the hundreds of thousands made homeless is almost mind-numbing. But even before the next aftershock strikes the country other questions are being posed. This natural disaster is on the brink of being followed by a man-made sequel. With two explosions in three days at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and other plants threatened with reactor meltdowns the whole question of nuclear power in Japan is at issue. Why is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world home to 53 nuclear power plants making it the world’s third nuclear energy power?

The normal answer is like that given by David Pilling in the Financial Times (14 March)

As a resource-starved nation, it has an almost pathological, and not entirely unreasonable, fear of being cut off from essential supplies in a dangerous world.

 

A single Chernobyl produced an increase in radiation, and later in cancer, on a large (and as yet not fully acknowledged) scale around the world. Currently all six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi are experiencing potential meltdown problems. And there are two other large nuclear power plants in the earthquake zone. The Japanese nuclear industry and government have poor history of telling the truth about radiation leaks. In fact we have been here before in Japan. As Pilling also tells us

At least we had a low-key dress rehearsal. In July 2007, an earthquake measuring a then-big-sounding 6.8 on the Richter scale jolted the enormous Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant near Niigata in northern Japan. It subsequently emerged that the facility, one of the biggest in the world, had not been designed to take an earthquake of anything like that magnitude. One of the reactors was shaken by a jolt nearly two and a half times more powerful than it had been built to withstand.

 

And yet Pilling tells us that it is “not entirely unreasonable” for the Japanese government to put not only its own citizens at risk but also those of the rest of the planet. In 1986 we entitled our article on Chernobyl “Nuclear Russian Roulette” but the really reckless gamble is in Japan.

Imperialist Imperatives

Japan has always had a worry about its lack of natural resources (even though until recently it was self-sufficient in coal). This led to Japan’s wars with China (1895), Russia (1905), its annexation of Korea (1911) and its invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The best example of all was the Second World War. After Japan invaded the rest of China in 1937 the US cut off Japan’s oil supplies. For four years Japan struggled on. The Japanese Imperial Army, by now running the country, decided on the ultimate gamble. They would knock out the US Pacific Fleet in one blow and then go on to occupy Indonesia and the rest of the Pacific islands thus gaining access to oil and other raw materials. The fact they would also have to defeat the British and the Dutch Empires in Asia to achieve this also gets a small mention in their policy documents.

This was the background to Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The gamble failed within six months (at Midway Island in June 1942 the entire Japanese aircraft carrier force was sunk). The US had the small matter of fighting in Europe before they could deal with a Japan which was simply awaiting its turn. One slight complication arose from this delay. By the time the US came to finish off Japan the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union was beginning to fracture. USA imperialism was already worrying about how far West the Red Army had got in Europe. Now President Truman was worried that when the USSR entered the war in the East, Manchuria, Korea and China would fall into Stalin’s hands. As Richard Rhodes so clearly demonstrated in The Making of the Atomic Bomb the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not to save US lives alone but mainly to pre-empt Russia’s entry into the war in the East (which Stalin had promised would take place on 9 August 9 1945). Hiroshima was bombed on 6 August, Nagasaki on 8 August. ⁽¹⁾

You might have thought that the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have put nuclear power out of the equation in Japan. Not a bit of it. After Japan finally signed a peace treaty with the US and put itself inside the US Empire in 1951, a programme of nuclear research began. Even as the death of Hiroshima victims from leukaemia mounted the state was set on the course towards energy from nuclear power. As Japan became one of the power houses of the global economy it demanded more sources of energy, and in the post-war world this meant oil. Japan depended by this time on imports for 85% of its energy needs at just the point the global cycle of capitalist accumulation was entering its downward phase in 1971. In the US this was signalled by the removal of the dollar from the gold standard and led to a plunge in its value. This in turn boosted the oil price since oil producers saw a massive drop in their real income. Fuel insecurity became a global watchword (and it has not gone away if we look at the rival schemes to divert the energy resources of Central Asia to this or that port) ⁽²⁾. Japan with its industrial output increasing and its lack of resources was more vulnerable than most. Besides quietly supporting the apartheid regime by leasing empty goldmines to store oil in for the future (so much more stable than the Middle East!) the “not unreasonable” solution was to turn to nuclear power.

A Rational World?

But what is reasonable in capitalist terms does not stand up to scrutiny by more objective measures. We live in a world made up of nation states. A “dangerous” world according to the FT quote above. It is dangerous because capitalism is today in its imperialist stage in which nation states fight each other (sometimes in a hidden rivalry, sometimes in open war) to garner the world’s resources. In such a world it may seem reasonable to build nuclear power stations in the most seismically unstable places on the planet. We have deliberately not entered here into the debate about nuclear energy since no rational discussion can take place under capitalist conditions. Where there are profit motives or nationalist agendas the debate is always distorted. We however take the nuclear lunacy in Japan as one more proof that this imperialist system with its wars and irrational policies is not consistent with the future needs of humanity. A really “reasonable world” will have no national states, no imperialist rivalry, no putting profit before people and no more ruinous wars. But this will only come about when the world working class abolish the capitalist system of production on which all this irrationality is founded.

Jock

(1) For more on this see leftcom.org

(2) There are many examples on our website but this one refers to previous article. See leftcom.org

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謹弔 스탈린주의의 부활,   사노위의 정치적 파산!

사회주의 조직내에서  비판의 자유를 제한(언론통제)하는 결정이 다수의 힘으로 관철되었다. 그것을 관료적, 행정편의적 발상으로 위에서 강제했던, 정치토론을 회피하는 다수들이 써클질서로 관철시켰든, 결정의 내용은 변하지 않는다. 명백한 스탈린주의의 부활이다. 그것의 명백한 근거들을 제시하는것 조차 의미가 없어졌다. 정작 그들은 자신들의 행위들이 스탈린주의의 잔재, 혹은 스탈린주의를 답습하고 있는것에 대해서 인식조차 못하기 때문이다.

그들이 파시즘의 대중심리를  다시 읽어봐야 하는 이유이다. 더욱 절망적인 것은  운동사회에서 가장 건강하고 타협없이 원칙적이어야 할 젊은 사회주의자, 학생사회주의자들이,  운동의 붕괴와 혁명적 전통으로부터의 이탈로 인해 스스로 스탈린주의자로 나서거나 방조했다는 사실이다.  

분명히 스탈린시대 이후의 혁명조직들은  스탈린주의의 함정에 빠지지 않기 위홰, 조직내외의 비판의 자유를 제한없이 허용하고 있다.  이것은 현존하는 혁명적사회주의자 조직의 기본이자, 철의 원칙으로 자리잡고 있다. 그런데 이들은 레닌시대에서 사고가 멈추어, 서슴없이 글의 질적수준으로, 혹은 오보라는 자의적 잣대로(오보는 사실을 왜곡한것이 오보이고, 정치적 입장이 잘못된것은 오보가 아닌 정치적 오류라 표현해야 하고, 삭제나 사과가 아닌 비판을 통해 바로 잡는 것이 원칙이다)   사회주의 조직의 기본을 무너뜨리고 있다.  정말 경악할 일이다.

또한 거대한 다수파 써클조직의 10여년은 좌파운동의 맥을 이어 주었을지는 모르지만,  전체적으로는 사회주의 정치운동의  심각한 퇴행을 초래했다.  또한 구성원들에게는  권위적 조직의  폐쇄성을   자기도 모르게 뼛속 깊-히 자리잡게 했다.  이것은 운동사회에서의  명백한 기득권이자 특권이었다. 사회주의자들이 가져서는 안될것을 갖고있다는 이야기다.  그래서  이번 참사처럼 사회주의자들조차 배신하는 이들이,  노동자계급을 전취하겠다는 발상은 그야말로 계몽주의 수준에 가깝다고 할수있다.

결론적으로  아직 사회주의자가 아닌, 전투적 조합주의자, 개량적사회주의자, 반(半)스탈린주의자 경향의 다수 회원들이 소수의  혁명적사회주의자를 전형적인 스탈린주의적 방식으로 조직에서 입을  틀어 막고 정치적으로 목졸라 살해했다.   따라서 이것을 주도한 세력들과 그들의 권위적인 이름들은 사회주의 당건설 운동 역사의 오점으로 분명히 기록될 것이다.

사노위는?

공식적이지는 않지만  모두가 공유한 바로는,   사노위는 출범당시 사민주의 ,민족주의, 스탈린주의를 배제한 채, 사회주의자들과 당 건설을 염원하는 노동자들로 구성하였다.  하지만  이번 결정으로 사노위는 1년전으로 후퇴하여,  오랜시간과  많은 희생을 치르고 어렵게 극복한 스탈린주의를 조직내에서  공공연히 부활시켰다. 도대체 이들에게 혁명강령이 무슨 소용이 있겠는가?  이들에게는 혁명강령을 제출할 의사가 전혀 없으며, 혁명강령에는  반드시 비판의 자유문제를 명기할 것이다. 왜냐하면 강령은 현실을 반영해야 하므로, 우리의 현실이 비판의 자유조차 방어하지 못하는 현실이기에 반드시 명기해야 하는 것이다.

결과적으로, 사노위는  사회주의 정치조직으로써  일정부분 또는 상당부분 정치적인 파산을 한 것이다.  나는 모든 진보매체, 사회주의 언론, 혁명적 사회주의자들뿐 아니라, 국제주의 조직들에도 이 과정과 결정들을 하나의 빠짐도 없이 객관적이고 명명백백하게 알려낼것이다. 그리고 그들의 판단과 항의와 경고를 다시 사노위에 전달할 것이다.
 

마지막으로 그간의 애정이 조금은 남아있기에 ,훗날 Marxists Internet Archive에 이조직이 Stalinist Organization로 분류되지 않기를 바랄뿐이다.

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사노위 서울지역위원회 온라인 정치신문 <사회주의자 통신> 2호가 발간되었습니다.

첨부파일이 올라 가지 못하는 경우에는 아래 주소를 클릭하여 Pdf파일을 내려 받기 하시면 읽을 수 있습니다.
http://www.lanchester.co.kr/img/ssotong_2ho.pdf

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북아프리카, 근동 및 중동에 무슨일이 일어나고 있는가?

(북아프리카와 근동 및 중동의 사건에 관한 토론을 위하여 참고할 점들)

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Say NO! to all varieties of Stalinism!
 

 사회주의 조직이라는 곳에서 사회주의 조직운동의 가장 기본인 '비판의 자유'가 목졸림 당했다. 이 땅의 스탈린주의를 거부하는 모든 혁명적 사회주의자들,  사회주의 ABC를 제대로 알고 실천하는  모든 동지들,  그리고 노동자민주주의를 방어하는 모든 전투적 노동자들과 함께 반드시 제자리로 돌려놓을 것을 다짐한다.

그리고,  비판의 자유를 억압하는 것이 무엇인지도 모른채,  사회주의자들에게 얼마나 치명적이고 무서운 일인지도 깨닫지 못한채 저질러버린(조직의 일부 사업내용을 비판하는 표현에 대해 조직을 부정하는 행위였다고  자신들이 일방적으로  판단하고 제재를 가하는),   폐쇄적이고 관료적인 써클주의 운동의 피폭을 받은  폭거의 주도자들과 그들의 뒷 배경에 일단 무거운 애도를 표한다.

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Earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear accidents in Japan: capitalism is a horror show

by ICC

"Fear the worst!" That's the message now splashed across newspaper front pages, in all the media, and on the lips of the world's leaders too. But it can't get any worse! Because from the earthquake, to the tsunami and then the nuclear accidents, and it's not finished there, it means the current predicament of the Japanese population is horrific. And because now there are millions of people on the planet living under the Sword of Damocles of the nuclear cloud released by the reactors at Fukushima. This time round, it is not a poor country like Haiti and Indonesia that is being hit hard but the heart of one of the most industrialised countries of the world, one that specialises in cutting-edge technologies.
It's a country that has first-hand experience of the devastating effects of nuclear energy, having suffered the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Capitalism makes humanity more vulnerable to natural disasters

Once again, the madness of capitalism and irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie has become front page news. Only now is the world finding out that millions of people have been crammed into wooden houses, along coastal shores, permanently threatened by the risk of earthquakes and giant waves that can consume all before them. And this in a country that's the world's third largest economic power!
As if this were not enough, they have also built nuclear power stations, which are all real time bombs, at the mercy of the earthquakes and the tsunamis. Most of Japan's nuclear power plants were built 40 years ago, not only in densely populated areas but also near the coast. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to flooding. Thus, of the 55 Japanese reactors spread over 17 sites, 11 have been affected by the disaster. As a direct consequence, the population is already exposed to radiation levels that have officially[1] risen to more than 40 times the norm as far away as in Tokyo, 250 km from Fukushima, a radiation level which the Japanese government nonetheless declared to be of “no risk”! And it’s not only nuclear power stations that have been hit but also petrochemical plants built by the coast, and some of these have set on fire, which will only make the disaster worse and add to the existing ecological catastrophe.
 

The bourgeoisie is still trying to make us believe that it is all the fault of nature, that we cannot predict the power of earthquakes and the magnitude of tsunamis. This is true. But what is most striking is how capitalism, after two hundred years in which it has produced phenomenal scientific knowledge and technical know-how that could be used to prevent this kind of disaster constantly increases the monstrous danger to humanity. The capitalist world of today has enormous technological machinery but is not able to use it to benefit humanity, as it is only concerned with the profits of capital... to the detriment of our livelihoods.
Since the Kobe earthquake disaster in 1995, the Japanese government has, for example, developed a policy of constructing earthquake resistant buildings that have withstood the quake, but which are intended to house the very rich or to serve as city office blocks.

The bourgeoisie tells big lies

Today, comparisons abound with previous major nuclear accidents, especially with the melt-down of the reactor at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979. Officially no-one died in that one. In comparison, all the political leaders are saying that the current disaster is not "for now" as serious an incident as the explosion of the Chernobyl power plant in 1986. Should we be reassured by these outrageously optimistic remarks? How do we assess the real danger to the populations of Japan, Asia, Russia, the Americas… and the world? The answer leaves us in no doubt: the consequences will be dramatic in every sense. There is already major nuclear pollution in Japan and the TEPCO officials who operate the Japanese nuclear plants can only deal with the risk of an explosion by fiddling with the problem day by day and shamelessly exposing hundreds of employees and fire-fighters to fatal levels of radiation. Here we see the fundamentaldifference between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. On the one hand there is a ruling class that has no hesitation in sending ‘its’ people to their deaths and, more generally still, endangering the lives of tens of millions of people in the name of its sacrosanct profits. On the other hand, there are workers ready to sacrifice their lives and to suffer the slow and unbearable agony of exposure to radiation on humanity's behalf.Today, the impotence of the bourgeoisie is such that after a week of desperate attempts to cool the damaged reactor, its specialists are forced to play the sorcerer's apprentice, trying to reconnect the different systems for cooling the reactor's core onto the electricity network. Nobody knows if this will work: either the pumps work properly and succeed in cooling the reactor, or the cables and equipment are damaged which could create short-circuits, fires and... explosions! The only solution then will be to cover the core of the reactor with sand and concrete, like... Chernobyl.[2] Faced with such atrocities now and in the future, our exploiters will always respond in the same way: with lies!

In 1979, Washington lied about the radioactive effects of the meltdown of the core of the reactor, while still evacuating 140,000 people; if no actual deaths were reported, the cancers still multiplied one hundredfold in the population, something which the U.S. government never wanted to acknowledge.

With regard to Chernobyl, when the problems mounted with the plant and its maintenance, the Russian government hid the urgency of the situation for weeks. Only after the reactor exploded and an immense nuclear cloud was dispersed miles up in the air and thousands of miles around did the world come to see the magnitude of the disaster. But this kind of behaviour is not just peculiar to Stalinism. The western officials behaved exactly the same. At the time, the French government excelled itself with a whopping great lie about this cloud coming to a full stop right at the western border of France! Another interesting fact, even today, is that the WHO (World Health Organisation), no doubt colluding with the IAEA (International Agency for Atomic Energy), produced a derisory and even laughable review of the Chernobyl explosion: 50 people dead, 9 children deaths from cancer, and a possible 4,000 more cancer fatalities! In fact, according to a study by the New York Science Academy, 985,000 people perished due to this nuclear accident.[3] And today these very same agencies are responsible for producing a run-down on the situation at Fukushima and informing us of the risks! How, after that, are they at all believable? For example, what is going to become of those they call "the liquidators" (those who are now dealing with the emergency) at Fukushima when we know that at Chernobyl "of the 830,000 liquidators brought onto the site after the event, between 112,000 and 125,000 are dead."[4] Even today, the bourgeoisie tries to hide the fact that this reactor is still highly dangerous as there is still an urgent necessity to continue enclosing the reactor core under more and more new layers of concrete, just as it hides the fact that there have been no less than 200 incidents at the Fukushima power stations during the past ten years!

All countries lie about the dangers from nuclear power! The French State expresses unerring confidence that the 58 nuclear reactors of L'Hexagone, the company in charge, are perfectly safe, when most of these power stations are either in seismic zones, or in coastal areas, or on rivers vulnerable to flooding. During the stormy weather of 1999, when gales inflicted serious damage across France and left 88 dead in Europe, the power station at Blaye, near Bordeaux, was flooded and this nearly caused the melt-down of a reactor. Few people knew about it. And then there's the power station at Fessenheim that was so obsolescent that it had to close-down for a few years. But by using replacement parts (many of which aren't the approved standard), it is somehow still in operation, and no doubt the maintenance staff will suffer the consequences of exposure to the radiation. That’s what they mean by "being in control" and “transparency”!
 

From the beginning of the earthquake in Japan, on Friday, March 11^th, the media advisedly reassured us that the Japanese nuclear power stations were among the "safest" in the world. Two days later it contradicted itself and recalled that the company, TEPCO, which manages the power stations in Japan, had already hidden incidents of nuclear radiation leaks. How can it be that the power stations in France, where "in the space of ten years, the number of minor incidents and faults at nuclear sites has doubled"[5], like they have elsewhere in the world, "are any "safer"? In no way at all. "Around 20% of the 440 commercial reactors in operation worldwide are located in areas of ‘significant seismic activity’, according to the WNA, World Nuclear Association, a grouping of industrialists. Some of the 62 reactors under construction are also in areas of seismic risk, just like many of the 500 other projects especially in countries with emerging economies. Several nuclear power stations - including the four reactors at Fukushima damaged by the tsunami on March 11^th - are on or near the ‘Ring of Fire’, a 40,000 km arc of tectonic faults around the Pacific."[6]
 

Thus, reliable information "suggests that radioactive elements are more and more around us. For example, while plutonium did not exist naturally before 1945, we are now finding it in the milk teeth of British children."[7], and this despite the fact that Britain has ended its commercial nuclear programme.

Capitalism is pushing mankind towards more and more disasters
 

And Japan is not just suffering from the nuclear catastrophe but from another humanitarian disaster too. Thus, the world's third largest economic power has been plunged into crisis, unprecedented since the Second World War, in the space of a few hours. The same terrifying ingredients are present: massive destruction, tens of thousands dead and to top it off, radiation, like that from the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Millions of people in north-eastern Japan are having to live without electricity, without drinking water, with diminishing supplies of food, supplies which may already be contaminated. 600,000 people have been uprooted by the tsunami that has devastated entire towns close to the Pacific Ocean, and have been left destitute, out in the cold and the snow. Contrary to what the Japanese government says – it has continued to downplay the seriousness of the situation, and the numbers affected, providing small details of the increase in people dead, day after day - we can already, without hesitation, begin to count the deaths in the tens of thousands for the country as a whole. The sea is continually depositing dead bodies along the shores. This against a backdrop of massive destruction of homes, buildings, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, etc.
 

Villages, buildings, trains and even entire towns were swept away by the power of the tsunami that struck the north-eastern coast of Japan. For some towns, located in what are usually narrow valleys like at Minamisanriku, at least half the 17,000 people were swept away and perished. With the warning given by the government of only 30 minutes, the roads were quickly congested, putting the "laggards" at the mercy of the waves.

The population has been saluted by all the Western media for its "exemplary courage" and "discipline", and has been called on by the Japanese Prime Minister to "rebuild the country from scratch", i.e. in plain language, the working class of this country must now expect fresh hardship, increased exploitation and worsening poverty. Admittedly, all this fits in nicely with the propaganda abouta servile population that exercises with the company boss in the mornings, who are silent and submissive, and who remain quite stoical and carry on as normal while the buildings are crashing down on top of them. For sure, the Japanese population is extraordinarily courageous, but the reality is completely at odds with the "stoicism" described in the papers. Apart from the hundreds of thousands who packed into gyms and other communal areas, and whose anger rose to a fever pitch and rightly so, hundreds of thousands of others tried to flee, including a growing number of the around 38 million people in Tokyo and its suburbs. And those who remained, did not do it to brave the dangers but because they had no choice. With no money, where can you go? And who's going to take you in? In every sense, being an ‘environmental refugee’ isn't acceptable in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. About 50 million people are forced to migrate every year for reasons connected to the environment but they have no status under the UN Convention, even if they are victims of a disaster, be it "nuclear" or whatever. Clearly, the Japanese with no money who wants to try to escape the nuclear disaster, or simply to relocate elsewhere in the world, is going to be denied the ‘right of asylum’ all round the world.

This insane system of exploitation is moribund and shows itself to be more barbaric with every passing day. Although immense knowledge and enormous technological power has been acquired by mankind, the bourgeoisie is incapable of putting it to work for the good of humanity, to protect us all against natural disasters. Instead of this, capitalism is a destructive force, not just here and there, but all over the world.
 

"We have no other choice, faced with this capitalist hell: it's Socialism or Barbarism. We must fight it or die"[8].

Mulan 19/3/11

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리비아의 위기 : 제국주의자들이 '민주주의'를 가장한 새로운 폭격을 준비하다!

*제국주의가 말하는  민주주의는 노동자민주주의와는 상관없는 서구 부르주아 민주주의의 강요일 뿐이다.
*또한, 반제국주의 투쟁을 위해 독재자를 옹호.방어하는 것이야말로 노동자국제주의를 민족주의 수준으로 타락시키는 반노동자계급적 사상들이다.

*제국주의 전쟁으로 고통받고 죽음당하는 프롤레타리아계급을  제국주의와  독재자로부터 방어하라!!!

*제국주의자들의 탐욕에 찬 폭탄세례가 아닌, 프롤레타리아계급의 국제적 연대와  무장투쟁으로 독재자와 제국주의를  타도하고  프롤레타리아권력 쟁취하자!!!

The Libyan Crisis: Imperialism Prepares New “Democratic” Bombs

The world capitalist crisis is hitting the peripheral economies of the Middle East and those strategies linked to oil and gas production. It has moved masses of the dispossessed to action and unleashed competition between the various international imperialist line ups. France and Britain are already ready to intervene whilst the small Italian imperialism prepares to take on a major role in the operation making military bases available and mobilising all necessary air and naval forces.

 

 

Even if it is still early to take a definite position of the Libyan events because the situation is still moving and thus nothing definite has been decided except Western imperialism’s escalation towards military intervention camouflaged as a humanitarian mission. The Colonel’s days may be numbered but his strenuous defence characterised by the need to reconquer lost territory, above all oil areas continues, notwithstanding the fact that the international capitalist community has put in the field all its weapons, from the legal (International Criminal Court) to the economic: embargoes, economic sanctions and freezing of assets held abroad and finally UN Resolution 1973 which imposes a “no-fly zone” over all Libya. This is the premises for a possible future full-scale military intervention whether by air or sea or on the ground depending on the tactical demands of military coordination.

Nonetheless we can make three immediate observations.

 

The first is that the revolt in Benghazi and other cities of Cyrenaica, as in some places south of Tripoli has broken Gaddafi’s enforced balance between his own tribe and the other Libyan tribes who for 40 years have been forced to submit to the political and economic dictatorship of the Colonel.
At the bottom of this are the never satisfied demands for autonomy of the tribal bourgeoisie of Cyrenaica and the Fezzan and, not least, the chance to autonomously control the oil revenues which until a few weeks ago were the prerogative of the “Green” dictator. It is no accident that the first protest moves took place in the East of the country where a provisional government has already arisen. It has the task of controlling the oilfields and guaranteeing the use and exploitation of them for Western clients.
The previous balance of power in the country was based on force. Gaddafi and his sons had absolute control of the army, the police, and the air force. They did not just control, but owned, the oil wells through the private management of national companies for gas and oil. This gave to the chief tribes, allied or submissive some crumbs from the already mentioned revenues according to their political value or their potential danger in the terms of (non) alignment in any struggle over the power of the “rais” himself. With this mould now broken, the bigger tribes like the Warfalla, who control a vast territory to the south of Tripoli, have mobilised against the regime. In 1993,in the middle of the international embargo against the Tripoli Government imposed after the Lockerbie bombing, the Warfalla had already attempted a coup d’état. Gaddafi brutally repressed it with dozens publically hanged and more than 2000 arrested. The Zuwayya who live in the central region between Tripoli and Benghazi, the Misurata and the Abu Llail, who control the area of pipelines in the eastern part of Cyrenaica have taken the initiative to ride the tiger of popular protest in an attempt to end a game that has been going on for 40 years. All the major tribes have small armies and a limited number of light weapons. In the initial period of the revolt they attacked barracks and weapons dumps. In the present state of things the Libyan revolt appears to be a tribal civil war, in other words between bourgeois factions for the political and economic domination of the country, the second oil exporting nation in Africa after Nigeria, and the twelfth in global terms.

 

The second observation regards the possible fracture of the present balance on the Middle Eastern energy fronts with all the consequences that would bring. It is not for nothing that the USA, with the support of France and Britain, proposed the UN resolution, with the aim of ensuring that events in Libya were not left to themselves with all the dangers that would entail. The imperialist preoccupation is not only about the future destiny of Libyan oil and gas, important if not decisive though they are in the international energy balance, they are also worried about the extension of the crisis to the Arabian peninsula. The winds of revolt are blowing through Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, which all surround the south-east and south-west of Saudi Arabia, or rather the biggest oil producer in the world and the main supplier of the USA. If Riyadh were also to enter the eye of the storm it would lead to new positions being taken, to new military manoeuvres no longer contained by psychological deterrence or by creating “no fly zones” which for the moment allows air attacks to disrupt Gaddafi’s militias in order to convince them to listen to more pacific counsel. There is no joking when it comes to ensuring energy supplies from the Middle East. US imperialism has already produced two wars which have not yet ended, is strenuously battling for control of the trade and transport routes for black gold from Central Asia to the Mediterranean coast. A similar critical situation in the Arabian ports is already setting the weapons of war twitching. For now the United States is watching carefully to see what will happen … China too, already present in Niger, Nigeria, Sudan and Chad, would not be certain to just look on. All of this in the face of hundreds of thousands of refugees – victims of the nasty internal bourgeois quarrels and international imperialist games – about which they sing the usual litany of lamentation whilst doing nothing in terms of mere humanitarian aid.

 

 

The third observation concerns the delay and lack of unanimity over the launch of resolution 1973. Out of the 15 members of the UN Security Council 10 voted in favour with five abstentions, comprising China, Russia, India, Brazil and Germany. This is no accident. It is not only the 1.5million barrels of oil from Libya per day that is at stake. It is also the role of France and Italy in the Mediterranean basin, the ambitions of Anglo-Saxon imperialism to play a role of control and domination, and the entire question of the Middle East and its energy supplies. In Bahrain, a small country but rich in oil, there is a civil war between the Sunnis (30% of the population who hold power and benefit from the oil income) and the Shiites (70%) who don’t get a penny from the oil payments. Sunni and Shia who in fact should go under their real name: a bourgeoisie of Sunni religious persuasion and a Shiite religious community who are fighting for political power, primarily determined by the economic situation. Behind this bourgeois line-up are the two imperialisms of the area: Shiite Iran and Wahabist-Sunni Saudi Arabia which, amidst a deafening international silence, has initiated a full-blown military invasion of Bahrain in order to guarantee a key anti-Iranian political ally. Even in Qatar the same scenario is being repeated, only this time the imperialist architects are Turkey and Iran.

All this is in the context of yet more tension. In Yemen Saleh has not hesitated to fire on the crowd with dozens killed. In Oman the situation remains edgy. In Saudi Arabia itself anti-Saud feeling is strong and insistent.

 

 

Within this framework it is natural for the respective imperialist fronts to act in defence of their own immediate and future interests. USA, Britain, France on one side. Russia, China, India, Germany and Brazil on the other. The prize is energy supplies amounting to 65% of the world’s needs. This underlines how there is another aspect to the Libyan question. For US imperialism (but not only the US) the major preoccupation is Riyadh: its capacity to resist, its oil, and world energy stability. Washington’s plan is to give NATO — fronted by the Europeans, with France and Britain in the front line — the task of controlling Gaddafi while the energy is reserved for whatever Arab front the situation eventually throws up.

 

As for the working masses of Libya, so long as they remain integrated in the tribal set-up, or take up the demands for freedom and democracy called for by the bourgeois opposition against the tyrant, there is no possibility of emancipation. Freedom and democracy at most would mean new, stronger political and ideological fetters, so that the same process of subjection and exploitation would carry on as it was before. It would not question the prime motor of this crisis: the settling of scores between the bourgeois tribes which have sprung up, or the alarming volatility of increasingly-voracious imperialism. In other words if they do not question the economic system which goes under the name of capitalism the merry-go-round of domestic and international interests will continue to turn with its macabre burden of crisis, civil war and imperialist arrogance.

 

The same thing applies to all the rest of the turmoil in the region. If the struggles limit themselves to the ‘conquest’ of democracy it means the end of any possibility of their developing an anti-capitalist agenda. It would signify the victory of this or that bourgeois faction in tow behind one of the fronts of international imperialism. Either a sign of a revival of class struggle will erupt on the Middle Eastern political scene in the form of a revolutionary political vanguard, or everything will go back to what it was before. Or almost, in a bloodbath, as in the usual imperialist script.

 

FD, 19 March 2011